Acts of Rebellion
by fowl68
Summary: The Auditore are a family of ghosts and shadows.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything!

**Author's Note: ** I have only just begun to play ACIII. So far, it's not as good as the others, in my opinion. It's still got time to prove me wrong though.

My brother and I's first book, an original alternate history/fantasy series titled The Sanctum Files can now be read on authonomy. I'd very much appreciate it if you guys would take a look and say what you think. The link is on my profile. I'm also putting it here, without spaces, naturally.

authonomy books / 47917 / sanctum-files-the-dragon-scroll / read-book / #chapter

* * *

_"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."  
-Albert Camus_

* * *

The Auditore are a family of ghosts and shadows.

La Volpe is the first to see it. When he first sees the white-robed figure standing on the rooftop, his thief in front of him, his first thought is that something big must be going on if Giovanni needed alternate sources of information._ (He knew it was foolishness. Giovanni had been dead for days; one of his thieves reported that the middle son—only son, now—had been the one to sneak away their bodies. But Giovanni—the good man, the fair man, loyal man—hadn't been dead long enough for La Volpe to be comfortable with the idea)_

The boy-man is wary and isn't a true Assassin yet. There is a sense of kindness, mercy even, that La Volpe recognizes as a trait of his mother's. The boy is draped in Vengeance's cloak, face too hard and eyes too mistrusting for seventeen years old. When he challenges him to keep up, something in him sparks back to life, something that, La Volpe is certain, went to Death's door with Federico Auditore. He is a shadow of who he used to be and of who he could become, stuck in a terrible half-life until he winds his way free from the rage that sets his jaw.

* * *

At first, Lorenzo thinks that the blood loss is taking its toll. The white robes—achingly familiar—are bright in the morning sun. As bright as the blood that stains the sword in the robed figure's hands. He knows it isn't who he wants it to be; that man is dead and so are two of his bright-eyed sons.

_(He's met Giovanni's family, of course. Maria's dry wit mixed with Giovanni's subtle charm make for an interesting dinner. Add the three children and a baby in the mix—three _spirited_ children on top of that—and those evenings were quite easily some of the most enjoyable in his life. The last time he'd seen them all together, though, had been several years ago. Petruccio had been, perhaps, three years old. Claudia had her father's stubborn chin and her mother's intelligence. Ezio and Federico were partners-in-crime, all grins and, after dinner, Lorenzo and Giovanni had sipped wine and watched them chase each other in the courtyard, scrambling up the walls in races to the balconies.)_

"You…saved my life."

"It's nothing. But the man who did this to you has to pay." Ezio, for who else could it be, isn't who he remembers, isn't the mischievous child constantly by his brother's side. This Ezio is much darker.

Ezio doesn't have his father's skill with a sword, but the instinct and potential is there. He's more vicious than Giovanni was, whether consciously or unconsciously.

"Why did you help me?" He wants to know the why, wants to know if Ezio inherited that same spirit from his father.

"You are not the only one who lost a brother to the Pazzi. My name is Ezio Auditore." The boy had forgotten him. Not surprising. It had been a long time.

"You're Giovanni's son." It's an acknowledgment and a judgment. Lorenzo remembers Giovanni as a teenager, as brash and quick to a fight as this young man. Time would, perhaps, change him as it had changed his father. Ezio knew Giovanni as a father, a banker. He had never known him as an Assassin. "Your father was a good man. He understood honor…loyalty."

Ezio doesn't say a word when Lorenzo says to kill Francesco and leaves without asking questions. Lorenzo can almost pretend that the figure walking out the door is Giovanni and that, in a few days, he would see his friend again, perhaps a little bloody, but triumphant all the same.

_(It was an illusion that didn't last long. Lorenzo was good at forcing himself to focus on the here-and-now.)_

* * *

Rosa likes Ezio. There aren't many people in the world who would risk their lives saving a street rat with a wounded leg and even fewer people who wouldn't recoil at her temper. Half of the time, Ezio just gives her that lazy, arrogant smirk and doesn't say anything. The other half, he just argues right back.

But she's no fool and she's seen things on her beloved Venice's streets, terrible things done by the scum of humanity. And she's seen similar things in Ezio's eyes, darkness and heavy memories. He tells her of his family's fate once and she is reminded of the steel-spined young woman that is Ezio's sister, of the hollowness of his mother, of the flashes of rage and vengeance that Rosa would see in him. She is reminded of the times when he will jerk awake at night beside her, hand going for a knife_ (Once, a terrible once, the knife had been at her throat and Rosa hadn't dared breathe. Fortune had smiled on her for Ezio realized who she was before the blade could be pushed into her skin)_

But he is not all gone, Rosa knows, for she has seen his smile, bright in his face and his laughter, warm and loud in the way only Italians can be where it bounces off their streets and echoes back, joined by others and smelling gently of wine and bread and olives. He talks with his hands—as most of them do—but in smaller gestures and he has a sharp mind. Rosa remembers watching him play chess with Antonio and his artist, Leonardo, in the long weeks of recovery after he'd fractured a leg with a bad fall.

The Auditore is stubborn with fire for blood and wings for legs and Grief hasn't entirely stolen him yet.

* * *

He's a charming one, she'll give him that. And confident in the way that handsome men often are. But he's polite too, genuinely so and she finds herself content in the few mornings she wakes by his side. Sometimes, he's already awake, sometimes he isn't; Ezio is neither a morning nor an evening person for his body has adapted to run for as long as it needs to go before it collapses on itself.

_(There was a sweetness in him too, a sweetness that tasted like breakfast and soft chuckles against the skin)_

Caterina likes his ruthlessness, likes his willingness to do what's necessary, despite what it can cost. Likes that he doesn't ask anything of anyone that he isn't willing to do himself—always a sign of a good leader.

But he doesn't want this life, she knows. He never has and Caterina can understand for she knows a thing or two about duty. But sometimes, she thinks that Ezio takes pleasure in the little things of his life now, of soaring above the rooftops, of seeing the new places and meeting the people. The world is too small for a man like Ezio Auditore, or perhaps it is simply not yet ready for him.

* * *

When Leonardo sits beside his friend—oldest friend, best friend—he sees lines of tiredness in Ezio's shoulders that hadn't been there the last time they met. But then, it had been a while.

"Something's troubling you," Leonardo says. A while it might have been, but no one knows Ezio better than he.

Ezio looks at him, shadows clinging to his bearded face beneath the hood. Leonardo still remembers the days, back in Venezia, when he did not always have to wear the hood. He preferred to, a precaution, but there had been a few days when the two of them had sat in a courtyard and enjoyed wine and bread fresh from the baker's, simply basking in the sunlight.

"Fourteen years," Ezio says simply, but his eyes are focused on the ground.

To say it is short. To live it…that is another matter, Leonardo knows. Fourteen years since a charming boy visited him with his mother. Fourteen years since Leonardo heard the bells tolling and heard of Giovanni Auditore's supposed treachery. Fourteen years since Ezio had pounded frantically on his door, seeming very small in the face of such deaths. Fourteen years since he first saw the rage of vengeance flare in Ezio's eyes.

Fourteen years may have changed Ezio—faint lines on his face, his nose slightly crooked from more breakings, new scars—but that vengeance is still there. Now, it is tempered with cunning and experience. Ezio has grown into himself after so long.

_(Leonardo didn't want to think of how much he'd changed as well. The sketches on his worktables were different to the point where, when he thought about what the Borgia were doing with them, it made bile roil in his stomach. Before, the sketches had been of life, of people, of animals, of his street in Venezia and Firenze. No longer. Now, they were machines of war, of death)_

"You should be spending today with Claudia and your mother."

Ezio shook his head. "No. There is no time for mourning. My recruits and I have heard rumors of the Borgias moving their troops."

Leonardo sighed. Sometimes, he thought that Vengeance and Ezio's intense focus were all that kept Ezio from falling apart.

* * *

The legend isn't the same as the man before him. The legend paints a picture of a fierce, bold man; the man before him seems like a shadow of that man, the ferocity belied by wariness, but Yusuf has always excelled at making people react. Ezio stresses the syllables of his foreign city and Yusuf is pleased to note that the man speaks with his hands as well_ (Yusuf's mother used to say that, if someone were to tie his hands, he would not be able to speak. Yusuf has not given anyone the opportunity to prove her right)_

"…The city where I was born." There is an old pride in those words and it makes Yusuf smile. Perhaps he and the legend have more in common than he thought.

"…So, by your custom, I would be Yusuf Tazim da Istanbul...I like that." He likes it very much. He loves his city, loves every crooked alleyway and sun-stained roof, the morning mist and the towers that spire towards the heavens. He likes the idea of always having his city with him, even if he should ever leave.

But there are shadows and weights dragging at Ezio's name, at his city. The few times he speaks of his Firenze, it is of the place, but not the people. Yusuf doesn't know what it is that had Ezio leaving his red-tiled roofs and grand cathedrals, but he knows that it is whatever has those lines of sadness in his face, the hint of something else when he smiles.

There are signs of the legend when he laughs, wry and low. And one night, when he is inspecting the hookblade mechanism, Ezio mentions a man who would very much like to study it.

"Oh? You know a weapon designer?"

A wry twist of the scarred lips that's becoming familiar to Yusuf as a small smile. "No. I know an artist."

"An artist who likes weapons? You have interesting friends,"

And Ezio glances up and there is a spark of mischief in his dark Italian eyes. "You mean like large-nosed Turks? Like Romani dancers?"

That makes Yusuf laugh and he thinks that this is what the legend is, what the legend speaks of. A good man who recruits street urchins and nobles alike if he thinks they have the dedication. A fierce man, that has not changed, but a man who still laughs in the face of danger and faces the world with feet planted and a smirk.

* * *

She knows the assassin, knows that he is viciously protective of the people he loves, knows that he is brutally efficient and wicked fast. She knows that he is not all that he seems from the moment he finds that back passageway.

But Sofia loves the man. Loves the Ezio who patiently listens to her stories, to her rambling—for she knows she does—about her favorite books. Loves the man who brings her flowers, white tulips when he can and despite himself, flirts almost automatically with all women. But she does not mind, for he is never serious. To him, flirting is as easy as breathing, as easy as killing had been and she knows who he always comes home with.

His sister—the one she always sees him writing to and finally meets—is very much like him, she finds. Stubborn and there are hints of a temper, of a steel spine beneath the elegant dress and the neatly pinned hair. Claudia grins like he does, quick as lightning and filled with an old kind of mischief.

The first time they meet, Claudia looks her up and down with an attentive eye. "You must be quite the woman to capture my brother's heart."

Sofia doesn't quite know what to say to that. She has not had many female friends in life—she prefers the company of books over people too often—and she does not know how to react to a comment like that.

But then Claudia smiles—and there is something of Ezio, of an _Auditore_, in it, but something of someone else too, someone uniquely Claudia—and says, "It's nice to meet you at last. He's told me a great deal about you."

Sofia looks at Ezio, who only shrugs a little, not quite meeting her eyes and he is no longer the tired man, but a younger one, one who matches the stories Yusuf told her while she knew him. "I may have mentioned you a little."

"My brother's a liar. Don't pay any attention to him." Claudia hooks her arm through Sofia's and leads her inside.

Sofia has the thought through all of dinner that night that how had anyone ever thought that they could bring down two Auditores such as these? Bold and stubborn, clever and charming and that is just one of them. Two of them together…it sounds like something that can bring the sky down around their ears.

They eat beneath the stars in Roma, outside on the roof of his sister's home. His eyes drift out to a tall building on a little island and, when she asks, he explains that that is the assassin headquarters of Roma.

"Don't worry," Claudia tells him. "They're doing fine. Annetta's son is a man grown now."

They share stories, her and Ezio, of the recruits. Many are humorous, if sometimes a bit morbidly so. Claudia tells Sofia of her girls and Sofia is surprised to learn that Claudia is a mistress of a courtesan house. She would never have thought that Ezio would allow something like that, not with his only sister.

"He didn't," Claudia says. "He tried to make me stop, to go back into hiding."

Sofia's eyebrow arched a little. "Tried?"

"She is as stubborn as a mule," Ezio says, eyeing his sister pointedly.

"You're one to talk!" Claudia cries indignantly and that has Ezio laughing a little, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes becoming more pronounced and Sofia has never seen that smile, for she thinks it is one reserved solely for his sister. "I'll bet he has never told you about that time that…"

They argue over the details of memories and their laughter echoes and Sofia is grateful for this time, for Ezio is so much less reserved, so much less grim with his sister, though they both wear their hardships on their face. But they are entertaining and warm and fiery and their shadows are lesser, their griefs set aside. Ezio would always have the mind of an assassin, perhaps, a mind more suited to instinct and weaving through mazes of streets, but his heart is no longer one. His heart is tired and she remembers his smile below Masyaf, the smile of a man ready to start over.


End file.
